Oldest primate skeleton found but not in Africa
Date June 6, 2013
John Elder
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The slender-limbed, long-tailed primate was about the size of todays Pygmy Mouse Lemur and would have weighed between 20 and 30 grams. Photo: Supplied by Xijun Ni
As long-lost cousins go, he wouldn't take up much room at the Christmas dining table.
The size of a mouse and 55 million years old, the nearly complete, articulated skeleton of a newly-discovered tree-dwelling primate has been given a mighty name - Archicebus Achilles, not after the Greek hero exactly, but the long heel bone that marks him as almost one of us.
The oldest primate skeleton ever discovered was recovered from Hubei Province in central China, lending further weight to the theory that primate evolution didn't originate in Africa, as has long been believed.
Northern Illinois University anthropologist Dan Gebo — a member of the international team on paleontologists that discovered little Achilles — told e! Science News: "This is the oldest primate skeleton of this quality and completeness ever discovered and one of the most primitive primate fossils ever documented."
The research team was led by Xijun Ni from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Dr Ni described the fossil this week in the science journal Nature.
Dr Ni recovered the fossil 11 years ago while doing fieldwork years ago in Hubei Province, near Jingzhou City, south of the Yangtze River, and about 270 kilometers southwest of Wuhan City, the province capital.
It was found by a farmer in a quarry that had once been a lake, and is known for producing ancient bird and fish fossils.
Achilles was encased in a rock that the farmer split open, revealing the tiny creature. He soon after donated it to the IVPP.
The discovery was kept on the down-low for more than a decade, in part because the blend of anatomical features had never been seen before, and was difficult to interpret.
It had a very long tail, was active during the daytime and would have been an excellent leaper, feeding on insects that were almost as big as he was. Dr Ni said Achilles would have weighed between 20 and 30 grams.
Achilles appears to have developed close to the base of the tarsiers evolutionary tree. Dr Ni said the discovery "marks the first time that we have a reasonably complete picture of a primate close to the divergence between tarsiers and anthropoids".
He said the recovery of Achilles "represents a big step forward in our efforts to chart the course of the earliest phases of primate and human evolution".
